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Mike Harrity, after getting to know him and watching him play at Kansas the past four years, believes Darrell Stuckey will have a long and productive NFL career.

But should a day come …

“He can do whatever he wants,” said Harrity, an associate athletic director at KU. “If in 15 or 20 years he comes to me and says, ‘Mike, I want to run for governor of Kansas,’ I’ll do whatever I can to help him win. He could be governor. I believe that strongly in him.”

It’s not only Harrity.

The passion with which people who know him speak about the Chargers rookie approaches the mythic.

“He is a good man, one of a kind, one of those guys who is almost too good to be true,” said Clint Bowen, who was Stuckey’s position coach and defensive coordinator with the Jayhawks. “I’ll never coach another like him.”

All the Chargers need Stuckey to do is be a faster, more well-rounded and consistent strong safety than they’ve had in recent years.

They drafted him in the fourth round and felt good enough about it that the decision was pretty much made right then that incumbent starter Kevin Ellison would be released before the season.

While veteran Steve Gregory likely will begin training camp working with the first team and could well be the primary strong safety come Sept. 14, the job is Stuckey’s to win.

Considered a bit short for a safety and supposedly possessing neither blazing speed nor overwhelming athleticism, Stuckey ran a highly respectable 4.49 seconds in the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine. His speed in the middle during spring coaching sessions was something that hasn’t been seen at Chargers Park in a while.

Bowen was quizzed by NFL scouts right up until Stuckey was off the board.

“I thought he was going to go in the third round,” Bowen said. “My phone was blowing up.”

What scouts asked about most was Stuckey’s athleticism, which despite six interceptions and 191 tackles over the past two seasons, not to mention a number of highlight-reel plays, evidently didn’t always show up on film.

“This guy is going to surprise you with what he can do athletically,” Bowen told anyone who would listen. “… This guy can run and jump and change direction.”

The Chargers think he can play.

But, really, so much more factored into the team drafting Stuckey as high as it did and essentially putting in his hands the future of a position at which they’ve been trying to use stopgaps.

Why is the “so much more” so important?

Why does it matter that he’s in seemingly every picture of a KU student-athlete doing community service, prompting the running joke in the KU athletic department the past couple years: “How many Darrell Stuckeys are there?”

What is the significance of the fact that when he was back in Lawrence last month and held an informal news conference, Stuckey stayed afterward to help the Kansas media relations staff put away chairs?